Nannie Doss had many nicknames: “The Lonely Hearts Killer, the Black Widow, and the Giggling Granny. She was born in Blue Mountain, Alabama, on November 4, 1905. She had four other siblings and had an abusive and micromanaging kind of father. He often did not want Nannie and her sisters to wear makeup or any revealing clothing because he wanted to deter any men from sexually bothering them. Her father also would never allow them to go to social events such as dancing or socializing with other people outside the family. This made her despise him because he forced Nannie to work on the family farm and not go to school, which caused her to have no formal education.

When Nannie was seven, she was on a family trip to southern Alabama. She hit her head on a metal bar while sitting down on a train when the train made a sudden halt. After that accident, she had various headaches, blackouts, and major depression. Nannie said that this accident served as a significant culprit to her mental state when she killed those people.

Growing up, Nannie Doss enjoyed reading her mom’s romance magazines and fantasizing about her future love life. She was particularly fond of the Lonely Hearts section.

Her first marriage was to her co-worker at the linen factory, Charley Braggs, at 16. They dated for only four months before her father gave them consent to marry. After the two got married, her husband was steadfast in wanting to continue to live with his mother since he was her only child.

Charley Braggs’s mother took up an extreme amount of time and attention. The couple had four children and were utterly dependent on Nannie. This resulted in Nannie constantly drinking and smoking, which became a nasty habit. It created a rift between the two and started the blame game of them having affairs, and Charley Braggs would not come home for days on end.

Tragedy struck in 1927 when two of their daughter died due to food poisoning, which caused Braggs to take their other daughter and run away from Nannie. Only the youngest, named Florine, stayed with Nannie and Braggs mom, but she also shortly died. The couple got divorced in 1928 because Braggs was scared of Nannie.

Nannie remarried in 1929 to Robert Franklin Harrelson and moved to Jacksonville with Melvina and Florine. A few months into their marriage, Nannie discovered that her new husband was an alcoholic and had an assault charge. However, this was her longest marriage on record, 15 years.

In 1943, one of her daughters, Melvina, gave birth to a baby girl. She went to visit her mother shortly after she gave birth. Melvina was heavily tired and groggy due to the fact she was given ether while giving birth. She was not sure, but she thought she saw her mother put a hatpin into her baby’s head. However, when she asked her husband and sister to recall what happened, they said that Nannie had informed them that the baby had died, and they saw that she was holding the hatpin when they were told. The couple had another baby shortly after the death of the first one.

The death of their baby drove Melvina and her husband apart to the point that Melvina was dating a soldier. Nannie did not like the soldier and constantly argued with Melvina about it. While visiting her father, Melvina left Nannie to care for her baby, and the baby ended up deceased on July 7, 1945. The cause of death was asphyxia for an unknown reason. However, this did not stop Nannie from collecting a life insurance claim for $500.00 two months after he was deceased.

In 1945 Harrelson raped Nannie, and the following day she put rat poison in his whiskey jar. Harrelson was deceased by that evening.

Nannie went on to marry another husband, Arlie Lanning. They met while commuting through Lexington, North Carolina, through the Lonely Hearts column. They married three days into their relationship; however, Arlie shared traits similar to those of her previous husbands. He was a womanizer and drank heavily, but Nannie would be MIA for months at a time but still played the dutiful wife when she did come home. So, it was no surprise that Arlie Lanning died of supposed heart failure. In Arlie’s will, he left his house to his sister; however, it burned down under mysterious circumstances, but the insurance money was given to Nannie since it was still considered the couple’s home.

Nannie quickly left North Carolina and went to Arlie’s sister’s place to stay. However, Arlie’s sister became bedridden and promptly died under Nannie’s care.

Nannie was still looking for a husband and married Samuel Doss in June 1953 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He was a Nazarene minister who did not like his wife’s romance novels and did not allow them in the house. In September of that year, Samuel was in the hospital with symptoms that resembled the flu; however, he was diagnosed with a severe digestive tract infection. On the mend from treatment at the hospital, he was released from them on October 5. Unfortunately, Samuel ended up passing away on October 15, 1954. Nannie killed Samuel to collect two life insurance that she put on him. The doctor who treated him saw a red flag in that and ordered Samuel to have an autopsy. There was a noticeable amount of arsenic found in his body, and finally, Nannie was arrested.

Nannie Doss admitted to killing her mother, her mother-in-law, four husbands, and her grandson. However, it is believed that she may have killed more than what she pleaded guilty to. Her guilty plea was made on May 17, 1955, in the state of Oklahoma, and she was sentenced to life in prison since the death penalty was not an option due to her sex.

She died in 1965 in Oklahoma State Penitentiary from leukemia.

Source: Wikipedia